On Tuesday, President Donald Trump dangled a “buyout” offer in front of 2 million federal workers, encouraging them to resign en masse. The mass email blast from the Office of Personal Management (OPM), designed to rattle employees into quitting, aligns with a key objective of Project 2025 — clearing the ranks of federal workers to install MAGA loyalists.
The move is already backfiring.
On r/fednews, the Reddit hub for federal employees, workers are rejecting what they see as an intimidation tactic. Posts urge colleagues to stand their ground and resist being pushed out. The consensus remains clear: don’t take the bait.
“We took an oath to serve our country and fellow Americans. They can drag me out,” says the title of one such post.
“To my fellow Feds, especially veterans: we’re at war“
Tensions between federal employees and the Trump administration are at a boiling point in D.C., fueled by an email sent Tuesday from OPM titled “A Fork in the Road.” The message, tied to a Trump executive order, mandates all agencies end remote work.
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The email laid out two choices: return to the office full-time or resign with a supposed buyout and severance pay through September 30. But federal employees on r/fednews quickly picked apart the offer. According to the fine print, there’s no actual buyout. Instead, it’s a “deferred resignation” allowing employees to keep their telework status until September 30 before being forced out.
“If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason),” the email states.
On r/fednews, users flagged the inconsistencies, with Senator Tim Kaine bluntly calling it “a scam.” The federal budget only stretches to March, leaving no funding allocated for buyouts. The Trump administration has not guaranteed that workers who resign will see any severance pay.
Right out of the Musk playbook
If this resignation ploy feels familiar, that’s because “A Fork in the Road” is the same headline Elon Musk used when he took over Twitter in 2022. In that email, Musk gave employees two choices: resign immediately with severance or brace for “hardcore” work under his leadership.
Those former employees had to sue Musk to try and get the severance pay he promised them if they resigned.
Now, Musk’s influence has extended beyond tech and into federal staffing. While he was appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — formerly the U.S. Digital Service — several of his close allies have landed prominent roles within OPM, as WIRED previously reported.
Thus, it’s hardly a stretch to suspect Musk’s fingerprints on the OPM email blast. By Wednesday, as backlash erupted on Reddit, Musk was amplifying the narrative on X, retweeting posts that cast federal employees as lazy. Meanwhile, the DOGE agency’s official X account framed the deferred resignations as a “paid vacation” where workers could “just watch movies and chill.”
It’s unclear how many workers will take the deferred resignation offer, but one thing is certain: the most vocal federal employees on Reddit are standing firm against Musk and Trump’s attempt to reshape the government in their image.
